


Let Run the Water You Do Not Drink

by almadeamla



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-02 23:29:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5267915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almadeamla/pseuds/almadeamla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Aang was freed but never met up with Sokka and Katara. Eight years have passed and the Fire Empire rules the world. The Southern Water Tribe is holding onto tenuous peace, until the Fire Empire launches one final raid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will be Zutara. With a few pairings in-between.

It was a rare tranquil day in the tail end of winter. The tundra glittered, ice crystals catching sunlight like diamonds, sending pinpricks of gold skyward. A wave crested and rocked the fishing boat gently, slow and deep. An icy wind, a precursor for a storm looming past the horizon, where the sun and sea came to meet, whipped Katara’s hair loopies into her face. They slapped against her cheek in time with the ripples of the Water Tribe flag in the air. Her son Hai gurgled against her back, kept close inside her parka, hot little feet kicking against her sides. His fat hands grasped at the flapping tail of her braid and he gurgled, cowing his pleasure.

Sokka grinned. “My nephew’s a natural warrior. Look at him, he’s already at home on the sea!” Sokka made a face at Hai, twisting his lips and puffing his cheeks, and Hai squealed.  
Katara rolled her eyes, pushing her hands behind her back to adjust Hai’s grip on her body with his knees. “Or he’s a waterbender. I think waterbenders have a better appreciation for the ocean than you.”

“Never,” Sokka said, expression flitting into an imitation of seriousness. It was the first time in a long time she’d seen her brother without a smile, not since the news of their father’s death, since the day the world burned. “You might love your magic water. But the ocean gives me _meat_.”

“Perhaps,” Kaito called from where he was adjusting the rigging. He wound the frayed edges of rope around his slender hands. “He is neither. And, like his father, he enjoys the simple pleasures of both land and sea.” His knot securely fastened, Kaito kissed Katara gently on the cheek. The stubble he had only recently begun growing again rasped her. He then plucked their son from Katara’s parka and brought Hai out into the frigid air.

It amazed Katara, without fail, how much she loved her son and the man who had helped her make him. It filled her, like the tide moving swiftly into a coastal cavern, rushing until it overflowed. Her heart ached to look at them—her darling son, cocooned in artic lynx-hare fur blankets, swaddled in her husband’s arms. Her perfect little Hai, round cheeks ruddy from the excitement, bright green eyes peeking out from the hood of his parka, framed by a few wisps of dark hair. Her Hai—the first baby born into the Southern Water Tribe in ten years.

“Yeah,” Sokka said, nodding. He clapped Kaito on the back. “Maybe he’ll end up being an earthbender. He’ll rattle the tundra and scare away the walrus-oxen and you’ll splash and scare away all the fish!”

Cackling at his own joke, nearly doubled over with laughter, Sokka headed off to tend to important matters of the ship.

“Sokka’s an idiot,” Katara sighed, seeing the shocked look on Kaito's face.

Kaito shrugged, long used to her brother’s antics. He was Sokka’s long suffering comrade in arms and hunting partner. Accompanying Sokka for days while they went out to cut holes in the ice and fish.

“My great-aunt was an earthbender,” Kaito said, in a hushed sort of wonder. He touched their son’s almost entirely covered forehead with his lips. “If Hai were an earthbender, he’d be one of the last ones left.”

It was the first time they had broached the topic. It was taboo, almost, to speak of the destruction, of the near obliteration of the Earth Kingdom. Apart from Kaito and a spattering of refugees on the southeastern islands, there were no Earth Kingdom citizens left. Kaito never brought the subject up, much, not after they had married. Though he had never outright said it to her, Katara knew he was doing his best to focus on the happiness his new life could bring.

“We’ll cross that ice bridge when we get to it,” Katara took Hai back from him, nodding to where Sokka and some of the men were unfolding the nets. “And not a moment before.”  
Safe inside her parka again, Hai quieted, and drifted off to sleep. It was his first time out on the ocean—Katara had insisted on accompanying the men on an impromptu fishing expedition. She remembered how it had felt to be left behind so continuously, watching her father and Sokka grow smaller and smaller while she was stranded ashore She didn’t want that for her son.

The early morning held such promise of peace and tranquility, so it should have been no surprise when it ended abruptly.

The ship, when they finally saw it, came rushing at them from behind an iceberg. No longer in hiding, it sent up a column of smoke as its engines steamed to life. Katara knew before she ever saw the flag’s insignia that the ship was Fire Empire. It rammed them hard enough that Pakak lost his grip on the banister and went tumbling over the side. No sooner had the ship made contact when a dozen Fire Empire soldiers came leaping aboard. The deck sputtered into chaos, cries of warfare, flames crackling up into the air. Katara, useless with Hai’s weight strapped to her, and not particularly competent without it, began to move toward the hatch to slip below deck. It felt cowardly to leave her husband and her people, but Hai’s safety had to come first.

As she sprinted starboard, one of the soldiers advanced toward her. His facemask was bone white in the sun, and the fire in his hands cast shadows in his eyes. Though she knew there was a man inside the armor, she had never seen something so inhuman. He looked like a restless spirit come back to earth.

He raised his hand to strike her, palms flaming, and from somewhere behind her a cry echoed to the heavens, ringing like a gull, long and sharp. In an instant, Sokka’s boomerang reflected red as it spun through a burst of fire, rocketing toward the firebender, and Kaito’s spear slashed into the chest of his armor, even as a stray blast of fire struck Kaito in the head. It happened in slow motion—the fire caught Kaito across the left half of his face. His hair singed and lit like tinder and his whole head was set ablaze. The firebender with the spear in his chest gurgled as his blood splashed onto the deck. Katara recoiled in horror as the man’s bladder let go and he sunk to his knees.

It took Katara several moments to realize she was screaming. Then the meat smell of her husband’s charred flesh wafted to her, and she bent at the waist and began to retch. Kaito lay before her, gasping, writing in agony as he continued to burn. The skin on his face smoldered slowly, burnt beyond recognition, lips shriveled, crunching each time he struggled to draw a breath. His eyes melted in their sockets, gaping holes staring toward the pale sky.

“Kaito!” She shrieked and knelt before him, reaching out to clasp his spasming hand.

Something hard struck her. The butt of a spear? And she blinked against an explosion of pain.

In her haze she thought—my baby? She heard someone talking. She thought it was herself.

“My baby?” Her back was too light, her sling empty. She shivered with cold. “My baby? Hai. Give me my son.”

Her eyes drooped, fluttered, and snapped open when she heard her son’s crying. Wailing. Her darling boy, the sea and the sky and the stars to her, more precious than the moon.

“Hai?” She asked softly, and caught sight of him, finally. One of the officers held him by his ankle. Upside down, Hai shrieked angrily. He kicked his feet and waved his tiny fists. _You can’t hold a baby that way_ , Katara thought she heard herself saying.

Then.

Then she heard nothing but the sound of her own anguish as the officer tossed her son overboard. She was moving before she heard her the splash. A seashell pounded in her head as her hands strained, reaching for any source of water, as she aimed at the officer’s face. Only a weak dribble of seawater struck him. Katara’s eyes rolled even as she staggered, toward the ocean, toward her baby, _Hai baby oh just wait for me baby hold your breath please_.

A fist slammed into her jaw. Katara crumpled. The seabirds screamed.

-

Katara met Kaito a heavy August evening. The white tundra dappled almost golden in the fading light of fall. Summer season was closing—seals and walrus-oxen swam sleek with their fat pups, penguins held their tiny babies between their feet. The sky and sea reflected one another.

Katara chewed a strip of sinew to soften it. She would use it as the lace for a new pair of boots. As she chewed, she watched the icebergs drift on the horizon. They rose like teeth toward the sky, huge and jagged. She was reminded of three years earlier when, caught in an argument with Sokka, she had split an iceberg in half with her bending. A bolt of light shot skyward and cast the snow an eerie blue. The light faded as fast as it had manifested, and the remaining pieces of the iceberg glugged and sank to the ocean floor. Katara had felt exhilarated for hours after, amazed that her own body could contain such power and produce such force.

As she watched, an iceberg shifted, and a fast moving ship came into view. Its metal hull glinted dully. Katara felt panic swell like a wave within her and she sprinted off to find her brother, sinew still tucked into the corner of her mouth.

Sokka was with the young boys, halfway through another warrior training. The boys were older now, a few just beginning to enter adolescence, and they sat entranced at Sokka’s feet. “Sokka! There’s a ship.” Sokka jumped up. “Boys, this isn’t a drill! You know what to do.” In seconds the boys scattered. Someone blew a whistle. The village went into a flurry of activity as women herded children into the closest huts. One of the boys brought Sokka his weapons and she followed her brother as they went to meet the ship at the village edge.

The ship didn’t fly a flag, but the markings on the side of the hull were faded green. It approached the village with caution, and anchored offshore. A small longboat was lowered into the water, and six men climbed aboard.

“Identify yourselves!” Sokka shouted, brandishing his boomerang and spear. It surprised Katara, sometimes, how much her brother had changed. He was a man now, not a young boy dressed up in warrior’s paint. He was formidable, tall, with muscle in his shoulders and a wide chest. He was almost of marrying age, he would be in four months’ time, and then he would have his pick of war widows for a wife. But, he and Gran-Gran had already discussed it, and it made more sense for Sokka to wait a few years until Ila reached her sixteenth year. Sokka needed a young bride to help him produce a new generation, to replace the many men that had been lost. Katara had long accepted that she would go for years unmarried, until finally one of the young boys turned twenty too. Then, if the spirits blessed her, she might have time to bear a child or two before she was no longer able. She was willing to wait, even for these young boys who were already like her own children. It was her own desire for family—to regain a small piece of what had been so brutally stolen from her throughout the years.

“We’re Earth Kingdom refugees,” a man from the boat shouted. He wore a green bandana tied around his head. “We’ve been living on a small island chain a ways north. We came to trade.”

“They don’t look Fire Nation,” Katara whispered to Sokka. Katara remembered the Fire Nation as brute strength, harsh eyes like glowing embers. Nothing like the humble party of men shivering in the cold.

“Maybe that’s part of their plan. Lull us into a false sense of security and then—fire blast.” Sokka narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t think there were any Earth Kingdom citizens left.”  
“There’s a few of us,” the man said. His eyes, brown as Katara’s own complexion, blinked back tears.

“Prove it,” Sokka replied just as gravely.

“None of us are benders,” he said, simply, sadly. He unfolded a piece of parchment from his pocket. “This is all I have.” 

The painting showed the man, a decade younger, smiling proudly in Earth Kingdom military garb. His uniform was shades of green Katara had never seen before. “Is that enough proof for you?”

Sokka nodded, returned the parchment. “It’ll do. Welcome to the Southern Water Tribe, brother.”

Every family welcomed a member of the trading party into their hut that evening. In Sokka and Katara’s home, they hosted a young man named Kaito. Kaito was thin, round faced, with long hands and wide palms that fit his body awkwardly. His hands dwarfed the openings of his sleeves. His long hair cast his face in shadow against the firelight, and his jaw was peppered with an anemic beard.

Night descended, dark and starless, but Katara was wide awake. Sokka snored deeply, bundled in his furs in the corner. Gran-Gran had gone to another hut for the night. Kaito was wide awake as well, his green eyes wide and full of reflected moon.

“Are you hungry?” Katara asked him quietly. She was at a loss of what else to do. She needed to be active, to have a purpose, to do something other than lie still. This spattering of refugees had her excited. If Earth Kingdom citizens had survived the genocide, then maybe their Water Tribe men had too. Like these men, maybe they were waiting, cautiously looking for the right time to return.

“I could eat,” Kaito nodded, bowing his head.

Katara stirred leftover fish and seal stew with her bending. She blew a few times on the fire and it grew. Soon the stew began to bubble. “That’s impressive,” Kaito said, smiling. “Your bending is so practical. I’ve always wondered what that would be like.”

“You can’t earthbend?”

“No. I’m not a bender. I’m not much of a fighter, really. I was conscripted into the regular Earth Kingdom army when I was seventeen, but I wasn’t a very good soldier. I was dishonorably discharged.” Kaito fidgeted, eyes downcast, and his fingers toyed idly with a loose thread on his shirt. “My general said I didn’t have the proper constitution for war. I’m…I was, I mean, from a small fishing village. All I know how to do is fish. I can barely even clean them myself—the blood, it just…ick.” He shuddered, green eyes fluttering closed. “I know that’s not very becoming of a man my age.”

“I think it takes a real man to admit his disgust with war.”

Kaito said nothing. The stew in the pot warmed, filling the hut with its salty scent. Katara used her bending again, this time to place a portion of stew into two bowls. Though now the move was simple, almost effortless, it had taken her months to master. She had wasted many portions of soup, much to Sokka’s dismay.

“I wish…” Kaito said, finally, as he sipped at the thick broth. “I wish I had been a better soldier. I wonder how things might have been different. If I could have helped more the day the Fire Empire came.”

Katara waited for him to continue, but Kaito just resumed his sipping of his broth. There was pain in his eyes, she could see it even in the darkness.

“I know how you feel. Even though I’m a waterbender, there was nothing I could do the day the Fire Nation killed my mother.” Her throat tightened and she strained to swallow her mouthful of soup. A tear, hotter than the fire flickering beside her, slid down the side of her cheek.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Katara.” Kaito set his bowl down. Katara saw that it was still mostly full.

“I’m sorry for yours too.”

They sat contentedly afterward, slurping stew in silence, and said nothing more until the sun rose to obscure the moon.

-

Voices. Katara woke to voices. Sobbing. Cries of mourning. To a hand cupping the back of her bleeding head.

_Can you hear me?_

She thought she heard Kaito’s voice.

“I can hear you,” she whispered, and felt her eyes roll into the back of her head. “Kaito bring me the baby he needs to eat.”

“I’m not Kaito,” the voice said.

Katara breathed, and the pain inside her head was like a breath of winter cold. She forced herself to open her eyes.

She was somewhere dark. Dank. The smell of the air was unbearable, fetid with body odor, with blood and shit and piss. As she adjusted to the darkness, she saw shackles locked around her ankles, and felt another two around her wrists. She tried to move and chains jangled.

“Where am I?” She asked, her head drooping forward, chin against her chest. She couldn’t keep her head up, couldn’t keep her eyes open. She hurt, from the top of her head to her toes, from her blood to her bones.

Hands, dry and warm, lifted her head softly.

“In the cargo hold. We’re on a Fire Empire ship.”

Katara remembered then—remembered every detail—and her body seized in agony and she lurched. She vomited a hot rush onto her lap, felt the bile slide through her clothing and stick to her skin. “Shh,” that voice said again. Those hands, firm and purposeful, dapped at her vomit flecked lips. “It’s okay. Your head wound is pretty bad, it’s still bleeding. But I think you’re going to be alright.”

“They killed my _baby_ ,” Katara wept, every part of her wishing for death too.

Those hands turned her head, then. And suddenly, she was looking at a face. Green eyes, huge and bright like Kaito’s, like Hai’s, met her uncoordinated gaze. Thumbs wiped her tears away.

“Cry as much as you need to,” that kind face said to her. “The Fire Empire killed my baby too.”

When Katara woke up again, the pain in her head had receded, slightly, into a throbbing ache. That kind face was still there, solemn in the darkness, and a huge hand clasped hers. “My name’s Haru. Are you feeling better?”

“Katara,” she said, and fought the urge to vomit. “Not really. Tell me where we are Haru.”

He shrugged as much as his shackles would allow. “I don’t know. They brought you down here maybe two days ago. I know we’re leaving the South Pole.”

She closed her eyes, but kept her head held high. She swallowed and her mouth was dry as walrus-oxen hide. “Why did they take us? The Fire Nation doesn’t take prisoners.” The man who killed her mother had made that abundantly clear when he’d set fire to her mother’s face. Now she had watched two people she loved dearly burn.

“I’m an earthbender,” Haru said. “They…they need earthbenders to help them with construction projects in the Fire Empire. It takes weeks to make what a good earthbender could build in a day.”

“I’m not an earthbender.”

“No,” he nodded. “You’re not. But you’re a woman. You’re a spoil of war.”

It took Katara’s brain several moments to process this information. Then the sounds and the smells made meaning to her, and she opened her eyes. They were not alone in the cargo hold. Chained, from floor to wall, were various men and women. Men like Haru, dressed in ragged scraps of green, long hair falling into their unwashed faces. Women, young, only young, women she recognized from her tribe and others, all women with sturdy waists and pretty faces and empty eyes. She felt heat beside her, and realized she was chained close to a girl as well. There was no room to move in the hold, save for a path of steel in the center, where no doubt a guard or sentry sometimes stood.

“What are they going to do to us?” She asked Haru, though she already knew.

“Me, they’ll work me until I’m too weak. Then they’ll execute me, probably publicly.” Haru swallowed, his head fell backwards against the steel wall. “I don’t…it wouldn’t be polite, or proper, to say what they plan to do to you.”


	2. Part 2

The day the Earth Kingdom fell, Katara smelled the smoke. Then, by mid-morning she saw it, rising in a plume that seemed endless, and every breath she drew tasted harsh of ash. She remembered standing close to Sokka, the two of them shivering in a watery swath of sunlight—stunned.

Though the Tribe had an inclination, it would be several weeks of blackened skies before they received a message that the world now belonged to the Fire Empire. And it would be another year after that before they accepted that the men who had left to join the war were never coming back.

-

Katara slept. Her head pulsed, and her body was alive with pain. She shivered, the cold of the ocean around her seeping into the ship’s metal, and neither of the bodies pressed to her sides offered warmth. Her teeth chattered and the cold hurt her skin like teeth.

A commotion started, after how long she had no idea, and there, standing in the center of the room, was a Fire Empire soldier, flame burning in his open palm. In his free hand, he held the handle of a large metal cooking pot. He was not wearing a mask and in the dimness he looked almost human, with a nose crooked from too many battles, and huge eyebrows that bracketed his forehead like shadows. His mustache, fuzzy like a tundra moth caterpillar, obscured the top of his lip.

“Hands out,” he ordered, voice booming in the dark.

With a feeling akin to horror, Katara watched as the soldier let his flame extinguish and began to walk the length of the room. He paused every few feet to slap a portion of rice into outstretched hands with a wooden spoon. When he came to her section, she copied Haru and extended her arms, head tucked downwards, and was rewarded with rice that must have been leftovers. It was cold and had begun to harden. Katara had few memories of rice—they had eaten it only after trade with Kaito and the few refugees dotting the Southeastern islands, but she’d had it enough to know that she was being fed unwanted scraps.

Still, she was ravenous, and shoveled rice into her mouth with her fingers. She chewed, grunted, swallowed. She stopped eating only to breathe. The handful of rice was gone quickly and she licked her hands clean, searching for stray grains she might have missed.

“How can they feed us like this? We aren’t animals.” Yet, she felt like one, and hated herself for it. Hated herself for searching for any fallen rice on the ground near her feet.  
Haru had finished his portion long before she had. He scratched idly at a patch of dried blood on his knee.

“We’re not animals, but they don’t see us as people either. We’re things to the Fire Empire. I’m a tool they can use to build their walls. And you’ve got it worse than I do. You’re a woman—so you’re already less than, but you’re Water Tribe too.”

Katara snapped her eyes shut, shuddering at the implication, at the memory it invoked—her son held upside down like a piece of garbage, something too soiled and dirty, the runt of an artic hen-fox litter, too insignificant to be allowed to live.

“How long have you been down here?” She had to change the subject, she could feel her eyes starting to tighten, to sting hot with tears. She was done crying. In the fetid darkness of the cargo hold, crying wouldn’t do her any good.

“I’m not sure. Keeping track of days is hard. I just go by when they feed us, but they might not be feeding us every day, so I can’t really say. But I think it’s been over a week.” Haru looked worse for the wear, worse than she did. His hair was stringy, his face shiny with sweat and grease. He was caked in blood and his own waste.

“They just sail around the world looking for people to add to their collections?”

Haru shook his head. “No. We were living on the Southeastern islands, not too far from the Southern Water Tribe. When the comet came and the Fire Empire started burning, those of us who could ran. There were only two places to go with the Earth Kingdom on fire. South or North. I went South.” Haru drew a breath that shuddered out of him. “Every day since they caught me I’ve wished we had gone North.”

Toward the back of the room, a group of women began to speak loudly. Someone sobbed. Katara could only catch the conversation in snatches, but it seemed one of the women had died at some point during the nighttime, and her body was beginning to stink. Katara couldn’t conceive of how terrible it would be to be chained to a corpse and be forced to watch it slowly decompose. She had seen bodies before, but the South Pole was cold, and Water Tribe custom dictated that the bodies be dressed and wrapped to prepare them for their journey into the spirit world.

“Tell me about your family,” she whispered, searching until she found Haru’s hand. He was her sole comfort here. The Earth Kingdom woman to her left wouldn’t speak to her, wouldn’t speak to anyone, just lay there listless. She blinked and ate when food was offered, no more alive than a fish hibernating in the frozen sea.

“It was always just me and my mother. My father—he was captured by the Fire Empire a long time ago because he was an earthbender. So I stayed hidden and tried to live the best I could with my mom. But then, when the comet came, there was so much confusion. Everything was burning—the houses and the trees—you could hear the trees explode when they got too hot.” He squeezed her hand tightly. Katara heard the wetness in his voice. “She’d been in the barn when it happened. I…I tried to get her out. I was going to use my bending, but she told me I had to escape. That…she was ready to be with my father. I…then she started to…oh god the _screams_.”

Katara squeezed his hand back, and he held to her tight enough she thought he would crush her bones.

“I lost my mother,” she said, softly. “I lost my father too.”

“There’s no happiness in this world, is there?”

Katara wanted to say that there could be. That there had been. That she had been _happy_ in her life. She had felt love—the love of a man who prized her above all others, the love of a child who was precious as the sky and earth and sea.

“Tell me about your baby.” She remembered, the haunted look in Haru’s eyes that first conversation, her own pain mirrored in eyes so much like Kaito and Hai’s. “I had a son. His name was Hai and he was perfect. He had his father’s eyes and even when he was wearing booties he would try to suck on his feet.” The first time Hai had done that, she’d plucked his damp toes from his mouth, and thrust him at Sokka. _He takes after you, I see_. Sokka had beamed at her proudly. _You’re just jealous I can trim my toenails with my teeth_.

“I had…she wasn’t my daughter, not really, but she was to me. That day…when I lost my mother, I started running. I wasn’t thinking of anything but how I could get somewhere safe, I was trying to listen for the stream, I knew if I could find it I could follow it to the ocean. I was following a path with some other people from my town and then I saw her. She was all alone, set off to the side of the footpath, wrapped in a green sarong. She was next to a bag of rice and a few bundles. She’d just been left there like she was too heavy and her family ditched her along with their supplies. She was a year old—I think, anyway—and when she saw me she reached out with her arms, begging me to take her, and I did. I took her with me and I named her Nuo and for years I raised her and she was mine as much as if she were a part of me.”

Katara rested her head back against the wall. She felt the sea sloshing through it, felt the vastness of the ocean, the pull of the moon as it created waves. She wanted so badly to capture it, to use her bending to save the day. To rescue these poor people who were in need. But she had been too pathetic to be of use to her own family when they needed her. Haru was an earthbender in the middle of the ocean, he had an _excuse_. She was a waterbender surrounded by her element, and a few splashes, a few cracks in an iceberg, were the best she could do.

“I’m sorry about your daughter.”

“I like to think that she’s happy now.” Haru closed his eyes, managed to smile. She wanted to see what he was imagining—a smiling little girl, her perfectly pleated hair tied behind her, laughing and twirling in Haru’s arms beneath a smokeless sky. “That she’s with my mother and my father. I hope I get to join them soon.”

-

After an unknown days of travel, the door to the cargo hold opened, and the room filled with light. In the blinding brightness of real sunlight, Katara saw what had become of them. The metal floor was caked in blood and excrement, urine puddled and ran in rivulets toward where the door was hanging open. Her fellow captives were filthy, disheveled and sickly. They looked like walking corpses and it took a few moments for Katara to realize that she looked that way too. Her skin had tightened, stretched out over her bones as it had thinned from malnutrition. Her legs cramped and buckled from disuse.

“Welcome to the Southern Fire Empire,” one of the soldiers said, grinning. “Take a good look. For some of you, this is the last thing you’ll see.”

She and Haru were immediately separated. The women were grouped together, chained together, while the men were led in a different direction, toward an elevated platform and a metal barracks. Hanging from one of the high poles of the platform was a noose. It waved in the wind morosely. Katara closed her eyes and didn’t allow herself to think about it. Instead she thought of Haru, how he had looked as he was led away from her. His head held high, bony shoulders straight and his chest forward, like a Water Tribe warrior going into battle.

She tried to think of the dream she’d had the night before as they were marched to a wooden building not far from the port. In the distance, beyond the tree line, Katara saw the outlines of huge buildings jutting from the earth. Some were taller than the trees themselves, magnificent and imposing, bigger than she had ever imagined a house could be. In her dream, the instant Hai had been tossed overboard, Sokka had leapt in after him, and pulled him from the waters and swam them both to shore. Katara wanted to think that the spirits had sent her a vision to calm her, but she knew wet clothes were a death sentence in the Arctic Circle for an adult, let alone an infant who could not swim.

The women were led inside the wooden building. It was dry, clean, and smelled vaguely floral. The floor was wooden and the windows were made with glass, not ice. She had heard of glass from Kaito’s stories, and she wished to touch it, to press her mouth to it and watch it steam.

“Good morning my beauties,” an older woman descended from a wooden staircase. Her black hair was greying at the temples and her large bosom wobbled when she walked. “You can call me Auntie, let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?”

Auntie bathed each of them personally. She bathed them gently. Katara was sat into a large tub of perfumed water and Auntie cooed at her, _my lovely, my poor precious_ as she washed the blood and grime from her skin and hair. “Don’t you worry honey,” Auntie rubbed the inside of her thigh briefly before she scrubbed clinically, efficiently, between Katara’s legs. “You’ll be a pearl among oysters once I’m finished with you.”

Katara did not want to be a pearl. She was a waterbender, forged from deadly tides and ragged pleats of ice. She was a creature of the icy tundra. She spent her life where men and animals alike could not survive.

Reaching deep within her, Katara grabbed ahold of the bath water and launched a tendril straight into Auntie’s face. It struck her hard and sent her sprawling backwards. Her damp hair tumbled into her eyes. Katara had another wave of water ready and she breathed out softly, praying it would turn to ice.

She blinked and Auntie stared up at her, perplexed, her hands and legs frozen to the soaked wood beneath her. Katara spun on her heel and started running, but a fireball soared over her head and blocked her way.

“Now, now,” Auntie said coolly. She steamed water from her hair and tied it back in place. “We’ll just pretend that didn’t happen, lovey. We’ll put a few extra chains on you, obviously, but there’s no need to clue the others in on your little secret. The captain had said one of the men thought you were a waterbender, but I told him he was mistaken. A real waterbender would never have been kept in the hold. Keep your bending to yourself, darling—we wouldn’t want to affect your price.”

Katara readied herself to fight again—better to die here, in combat, than in the bed of a Fire Empire man. But the smoke rising from Auntie’s hands stopped her. She had seen two of her loved ones burned to death. As much as she wanted to join them, to do the honorable thing and die a warrior’s death, she could not bear to let that fire scorch her flesh.

“I’m not something you can sell like a piece of jewelry. I’m a human being!” She shouted. Her anger sent waves of water sloshing from the tub.

“You’re Water Tribe,” Auntie said, leading her over to a huge closet. She pulled the door open and revealed more styles of fabric than Katara had ever seen. “You’re much closer to a piece of jewelry than you think.”

Auntie dressed her in a variety of styles. The fabrics were all unique—silken, smooth, almost polished—so different from the spun textures of walrus-oxen yarn or the innate softness of furs. The dresses Auntie tried on her each had a different pattern and different cuts. Some stopped above her knees, others just below her thighs, and the necklines all exposed her breasts. None were the practical ankle length dresses of the Water Tribe, designed to keep heat in. These were designed for a man’s pleasure, to entice and enthrall the male mind.

“Oh.” Auntie clasped her hands to her chest. “Oh yes, that’s it. You look stunning.”

Auntie chose a short dress for her, deeply crimson, and it flowed over her skin like fresh blood. The hem had slits in the sides that showed a long thigh each time she moved. The sleeves ended at her armpits and the neckline plunged downward like the peak of an iceberg.

Now that she was dressed, once again she found herself shackled, chained up in the main room with the other girls. They were all dressed finely, in reds and blacks and golds. Auntie had painted their faces, they were perfumed and lotioned, and no longer looked like emaciated prisoners of war.

No sooner were they dressed when men began to enter. Though Katara knew nothing of politics or the world outside the South Pole, she knew these were important men. Wealthy men. Dressed in fine silks and robes, not dyed animal skins. Many were portly, withered with age, inspecting each woman carefully, fat pouches of coins jingling from their waists. One man grabbed Katara by her jaw and forced it open to look at her teeth.

“Mmmhm,” he hummed in amusement. “No sign of the rot in this one. Surprising, given she lives off animal fat like a beast.”

“She is a true beauty,” Auntie murmured. “Renowned among her tribe.”

“Is she pure?” The man turned her chin to face him. He was tall, imposing, with thick sideburns that ended in the middle of his cheeks. His eyes, the same dark gold she saw in her nightmares, were like condensed flame.

Auntie sighed, world weary. “Unfortunately, no. There was some mention of a baby when they first found her. But she’s still young. Very shapely. She could bear many children still.”

“I’ve no use for Water Tribe halflings,” the man spat. His thumb and index finger pressed further into her skin. “But I know someone who might. He’s disgraced enough as it is already. Might as well throw a water bitch into the mix. It would be quite unbecoming of royalty to refuse such a generous gift. Even for a pathetic prince.” He inspected her a bit longer. Trailed his hands down her sides, cupping roughly at her breasts. He seemed disappointed, angered, when she didn’t flinch. What pain was this man’s hands on her, when the Fire Empire had already stolen the loves of her life? Father, mother, husband, son, and brother, her virtue was of no consequence. “What’s your asking price for her?”

“She’s quite valuable. As a Water Tribe woman, she can attend to all domestic duties. Cooking, cleaning, I believe she even has knowledge of how to treat and prepare furs. She’s more expensive than your typical Earth Kingdom woman, you understand.”

“Yes, yes,” the man swatted in Auntie’s direction in anger. “The price is of no consequence. I’ve been sent here on an errand. I was told to spare no expense.”

“In that case,” smiled Auntie, “ten pounds of gold should do.”

“For an impure Water Tribe woman? I may not have a budget, but you must mistake me for a fool.”

Auntie blinked sweetly, but Katara thought she saw fear flicker in her amber eyes. She bowed, hands folded together, shifting minutely on her feet. “Oh never, Admiral. That is merely my starting price. There is always room to negotiate, of course.”

The Admiral grunted. “I’ve ignored the laws broken by your little auction house here for several years now. And I expect that propriety won’t be overlooked.”

“I am eternally grateful for your discretion, Admiral. For you, five pounds, and free use of any girls when you pass through.”

“Better,” the Admiral sneered. He jerked his head at one of the soldiers waiting silently behind him. The soldier immediately opened a pouch at his hip and rifled through. He deposited a selection of golden coins into Auntie’s hand. Then his eyes fell on Katara. “Get moving. We’ve got a few days journey ahead of us. I won’t be slowed down by _you_.”

“Where are you taking me?” She hissed, trying to dig her heels into the wooden floor, into the dirt, into whatever she could find that might keep her from going with him. When he felt her resistance, he pulled hard on the chain he was using to lead her, and sent her falling onto her face. Katara sputtered, feeling blood spurt from her nose onto the ground beneath her. She squeaked when the Admiral used a booted foot to roll her over. Then he pressed that booted foot into the center of her chest and pushed.

“I will not be spoken to with insolence by Water Tribe trash like you.” He bent over her, face a few feet from hers. She could feel the heat of his breath. She could smell the ash and fire in his soul. “You might have been prized back in that frigid hovel you called home, but here you’re nothing. You’re a dog. You aren’t human. You’re the dirt on the bottom of my shoes. If your existence didn’t serve me a purpose, I’d take pleasure in watching you burn.”

Without warning he kissed her. Used one hand to pin her wrists to the earth. His mouth plundered, his tongue was _scorching_ , and it was nothing like the careful kisses she and Kaito had shared. It was power and it was rage. It was the Fire Empire stealing the only thing left of her. And Katara opened her mouth, screaming, and bit down as hard as she could. Clamped her teeth down like snapping turtle-shark and tasted blood. And that was a relief to her, almost—to know that Fire Empire soldiers were at least human enough to bleed and kill.

“Ragr,” the Admiral roared, a hot hand closing around her throat, fingers digging inwards, choking the life from her until she had to let his tongue go. “You little Water Tribe bitch.” He spat, and blood shone in the corner of her mouth. “Oh you’re too perfect. You’re just the right fit. An impudent concubine for a pitiful prince.”


End file.
